The children made it to ten-thirty, which in parent years is basically midnight. Lily went first — mid-sentence, describing her plan for the new year ("more horses, less vegetables"), her head dropped against Kameron's shoulder like someone flipped a switch.
Luke followed ten minutes later, sprawled across the couch in a position suggesting his spine had been removed.
Levi walked himself to bed, clutching his notebook, eyes closed, navigating on muscle memory — asleep on his feet but unwilling to be carried because carrying was for babies and he was a man who walked to his own bed, thank you.
Kameron carried Lily. Colt carried Luke. I followed Levi close enough to catch him, far enough to preserve the dignity that at seven is more valuable than cash.
After midnight cold January air, Texas stars are dense and bright — the kind of sky that makes you feel simultaneously enormous and irrelevant, which is the correct state for the first hour of a new year.
Kameron's arm around my shoulders. Colt's hand on my knee. Twenty-four weeks of baby shifting in her sleep. We didn't make resolutions. We just sat — three people who'd survived a year that tried to dismantle them, watching the clock enter territory that had given no indication whether it would be better or worse.
Sitting was enough. Some years you ring in with champagne. Some years you ring in by still being alive together and call that the victory it is.
Colt's birthday was on January first. New Year's baby — which explained everything. Born on a day for fresh starts and clean ledgers, of course he grew up to color-code spreadsheets and treat organization as a love language.
We surprised him with nothing big. Breakfast he didn't have to cook — eggs, bacon, biscuits from scratch, the good coffee from Marisol's Christmas bag that we'd been rationing like wartime contraband.
Nice plates — the ones without chips, which in our house qualified as fine china. Candles Lily insisted on because "birthdays need fire, Mama."
The triplets' cards. Lily drew a horse in purple crayon with proportions suggesting the animal had been through something traumatic but was handling it with grace.
Luke drew a truck — big tires, flames on the sides, PAPA spelled backwards because his relationship with directionality remained adversarial.
Levi wrote a poem in four lines. Margins ruled in pencil:
Papa is smart and also tall. He fixes things when things might fall. I'm glad he's here because he's gotta Stay forever. Love, from your son. For Papa.
The rhyme was ambitious. The execution is debatable. The sincerity lethal. Colt read it three times — once silently, once aloud, once alone in the kitchen holding it with both hands like a deed to something he'd been trying to own his whole life and a seven-year-old had handed him the title.
That afternoon, three rotting posts, two leaning, one lying in the grass like a man who'd seen enough. Kameron on the post driver, Colt on the wire, rhythms synced without discussion.
Kameron broke the silence. He always did.
"I was jealous of you. In the beginning." Casually, mid-swing, like mentioning weather. "Your calm. Your competence. The way Ivory trusts you with the quiet stuff — bills, plans, the two a.m. things. She leans on you like a wall, and I wanted to be that wall."
Colt set the stretcher down. Looked at Kameron with the careful attention of a man hearing something he'd suspected but never confirmed.
"I was jealous of you too." The admission cost him — Colt didn't trade in vulnerability the way Kameron did, and every exposed nerve was a calculated risk.
"The kids climbing on you. The way Ivory laughs with you — not politely, the real one, the loud one. You make her light up. I make her feel safe. Those aren't the same thing, and I spent months wishing I could do both."
Kameron grinned. "So we're both idiots."
"We're both idiots."
They laughed. Two men in a field admitting they'd each wanted to be the other, discovering the woman they loved needed both exactly as they were.
Whatever ghost of rivalry still rattled chains died there. Not with confrontation. With a laugh and a fence post and the shared understanding that jealousy is just love with bad math.
That week, Ryan and Stella announced the pregnancy publicly. In Hico. On purpose. Which meant that for seven glorious days, the town's gossip machine had a target that wasn't me — the sheriff's partner was expecting, and the speculation about nursery colors and due dates and whether Ryan Hill would faint in the delivery room (consensus: absolutely, probably twice) consumed enough conversational bandwidth to give my family a full week of breathing room.
One whole week where nobody looked at me sideways at the feed store. A vacation from judgment, courtesy of my brother's reproductive timing.
Ryan called Wednesday. "You're welcome. I got pregnant specifically to take the heat off you."
I threw a dish towel at him. Metaphorically through the phone. Then actually, when he repeated the joke at dinner that evening in front of Kameron, who laughed hard enough to bruise his healing ribs.
That evening. After dinner, after the kids were down. Colt checked the ranch voicemail — a nightly ritual performed with the dedication of a man who believed ignoring messages was a character flaw.
One message. A woman's voice — polished, warm, the kind of voice that had been professionally pleasant for so long it had forgotten how to be anything else.
"Colton, sweetheart, it's your mother. Your father and I are driving down to Hico this week. We'd love to meet the family. Don't worry about a thing — we just want to see you."
Colt replayed it. Then again. Standing in the kitchen with the phone pressed to his ear, face draining of color with the slow precision of a man watching every defense get dismantled by thirty-two words and a voice that called him sweetheart like it still had the right.
I watched from the doorway. I'd seen that expression once before — on Kameron, in a driveway, watching a white truck pull in. Different parent and man, but same ghost.
The universe apparently had a theme for this season, and that theme was: your past will find you, and it will arrive without invitation, and it will use your childhood name.
"Colt?"
He set the phone down. Looked at me. And for the first time since I'd known him, Colton McKenna looked like he had absolutely no plan.